If there are truly no other options, then the developers are going to have to severely reduce the price of their real estate or choose not to build there. This is simply taking an implicit approach to things, which may or may not work.
If anything doing this is a way for cities to implicitly get citizens on board for investing more in public transit. All of the new apartment buildings in the hip parts of town don't have any parking for your cars, so you're forced onto public transportation more, which you might think stinks, so you now care more about voting for infrastructure improvement.
Not building more housing is not an option, they're going to be built somewhere. The question is, will the new housing units be built waaaaay farther out in new sprawling suburbs, or will they be built next to a city train station and have no parking spots? Only one of those two options generates more road traffic.
I have friends more invested in housing issues than I am. But they generally agree with my assessment that without fixing transportation issues there is only downsides for homeowners and even renters to new development. It definitely seems like developers don't want to to pay a cent for mass transit. The just want to build lux houses and lofts in some neighborhood and then run away with the money.
I think Scott Wiener is right. Build mass transit and allow developers build housing close in.
Rather than building housing way outside the city center and building expensive transit to it, upzoning around current transit would be a better use of the resources we already have.
A 35 story building's residents will make much greater use of existing mass transit when located within 3 blocks of said transit than existing low rise development will.
I'll bite... I've protested apartments being built near my house-with-a-garden in the suburbs (Seattle area).
Not because I have a particular interest in my house price, or want to interfere with other people, but because the plans are doing absolutely sweet FA to improve the infrastructure to cope with the additions. In general, I'd be happy for the extra apartments if they came with extra infrastructure. We'd all benefit from it.
In one case, they started planning to add hundreds of apartment blocks specifically targetting young families, and yet the way it was being done there would be zero money going towards local schools to deal with the extra influx. Usual construction requires money towards schools, but there are loopholes, and the developer was using them, and the city seemed happy to let them.
Nor were there any plans to deal with the additional cars being added. Even with good transit links to Seattle, the roads leading to the proposed site.
Nor were there plans to deal with increased sanitation or power demand on an already flaky power grid.
The list literally goes on and on. What we keep seeing around here is developers interested in doing the absolute bare minimum to build apartment blocks, and a city content to just let them overload an stretched resources.
I live in the Vancouver area, where city councils are almost entirely populated by developers or candidates supported by developers. So by all appearances, it's friendly to developers.
What's wrong with this picture? Developers love building luxury condos. 3-bedroom apartments? Not sexy. Low income housing? Not sexy. Unoccupied luxury condos? No problem, refusing to sell keeps those valuations up, which you write off as a loss -- easy $0 tax bill!
And then the really juicy shit. We're expanding mass transit! Great, right? Stations are great place to put the high density, walkable neighborhoods! But who chose the locations of the stops? Developer-controlled city councils. It reeks of self-dealing, especially when it appears that the developers bought up the land before the station locations were announced...
So. Be careful what you wish for. It's not just "new developments" that we need, it's high density, affordable housing.
But the land goes up in value because it is all single family homes so it becomes a limiting resource.
If you put up high quality high density apartment complexes next to Caltrain stations land cost would go down. Which is why the voters do not want that under any circumstance.
If new construction is allowed though, the people parking money will encourage more development. You can always add another 5 floors to the top of the building which nobody lives in like they do in NYC.
Yes, but in addition to that are impact fees for development. That's specifically designed to cover the build up of additional infrastructure necessary to support the buildings being added. But there are loopholes that developers like to use to avoid them, and cities willing to look the other way. I don't blame the developers for wanting to avoid the fees, that's just good business sense.
I do blame the city for being willing to look the other way and enabling it.
Why not let the market decide what needs to be built?
Edit: Built too many luxury apartments and those come down I price and are the new middle class apartments. It's the developers loss. Built tons of tenements and either people are happy over cheap housing out no one moves in and they get upgraded or even cheaper. It's magical!
of course it would be ideal if everyone could be reasonable and not abuse these processes, but that's obviously not the case. So the decisions seems to come down to maybe having new ugly buildings vs having no new buildings. I think people that need somewhere to live would choose the new ugly building instead of overpaying for old buildings.
I think the idea is that if you want to build a building with 3+ spaces per unit, you should be doing it further away from transit. Let buildings with a higher ratio of housing density to parking be closer.
Clearly, the developer thinks it will make financial sense to build it that way. If it turns out nobody wants it, then all the better, the market forces will drive down the price and make it affordable housing. The only one that loses in this case is the developer. Succeed or fail, it will be a plus for people who want to buy in a housing starved area.
The problem is, is that these cities are approving the creation of more office space (local jobs) without increasing housing. If you're building commercial property there should be a plan to create additional housing.
Build near mass transit and in walkable neighborhoods and restrict the number of parking spaces. Make streets safer to walk and bike. Adding more housing units doesn't need to mean a linear increase in cars as well.
That doesn't just increase supply. It also reduces demand.
There may be a billion people who would move there now if they could afford it. The additional units required to get things into the affordable price range would degrade the experience though, causing most people to reject the result.
So what this accomplishes is the destruction of a desirable place to be. The smaller buildings and easier parking are inherently part of the desirability. Even the exclusiveness itself is part of the desirability.
I know of no one that is against putting up more housing near transit. People that live near the new construction will see their property values and quality of life rise due to more walkable businesses nearby. People selling existing houses on up zoned lots should also be able to charge a premium, knowing the developers are putting in >>$10M of housing units on the lot.
I wish I knew which legislators blocked this so I could donate to their opponents.
I'm not anti-development but your last statement is not necessarily guaranteed. These days new units are being sold off-plan before construction to wealthy international non-residents who simply want to park their money. They will remain empty. Unless there are provisions in the permits to prevent this, but it's difficult to enforce.
He doesn't talk about who is going to pay for everything. In a road with lots of private ownership, one person can improve their property but they can't force their neighbours to do it as well.
The only likely method is the deep pockets of the developer but why would they do this to only sell the properties to low-income families, which might be zero ROI when they might as well do the same in an up-and-coming city and sell for muchos dollars to the rich?
I love the idea but the main reason why most good ideas are not implemented is that they are much more difficult than it sounds, often for many reasons, not one.
If anything doing this is a way for cities to implicitly get citizens on board for investing more in public transit. All of the new apartment buildings in the hip parts of town don't have any parking for your cars, so you're forced onto public transportation more, which you might think stinks, so you now care more about voting for infrastructure improvement.
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